It was either doing that ... or ... the USA be officially declared bankrupt at that time.
“It was either doing that ... or ... the USA be officially declared bankrupt at that time.”
No, bankruptcy wasn’t an issue. What could have been done instead of breaking the link to gold was to cease using the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
We had been experiencing inflation since the late 1950s, early 1960s. The first public notice of this was the removal of silver from American coinage and the end of the silver certificate dollar.
This came about due to a conflict between our domestic monetary policy needed to defend the dollar’s value and our foreign policy goals as leader of the Free World. We couldn’t do both while the dollar served as the reserve currency. The problem is called the ‘Triffin Dilemma’ and you can google it if you’re curious.